[SOLVED] Data recovery - Windows installation
by Mantra from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6CTMC)
First, apologies if this doesn't belong in the security forum - seemed like the most appropriate to me.
I decided to play around with an old PC and see if I could recover any data from it, more for practice than because I need to.
The PC has Windows on it, has been used for years, and I've just done a "reset Windows" on it.
Fired up Kali in forensic mode. Ran photorec on the drive, it found about a thousand files - mostly text or xml files that seem to be Windows-installation type files, but nothing else.
I'm wondering why I can't find any of the old data. Unless a Windows reset actually writes to the whole drive, but I'd expect it just to do a quick format and replace the MFT/partition table. Any ideas anyone?
I decided to play around with an old PC and see if I could recover any data from it, more for practice than because I need to.
The PC has Windows on it, has been used for years, and I've just done a "reset Windows" on it.
Fired up Kali in forensic mode. Ran photorec on the drive, it found about a thousand files - mostly text or xml files that seem to be Windows-installation type files, but nothing else.
I'm wondering why I can't find any of the old data. Unless a Windows reset actually writes to the whole drive, but I'd expect it just to do a quick format and replace the MFT/partition table. Any ideas anyone?